User blog:Anotherrav/Figure Image Capture Tutorial
I'm going to go through my steps for capturing a figure image, and then what I due to edit it into a clean image with a transparent background. For image editing, I use Gimp , an open source program that is available free for Windows, macOS, and Linux. For this tutorial, I'm going to walk through the steps I used for Agent 001, which is an Enchanted character. Enchanted characters tend to be harder to capture than other characters. #First, find Agent 001 in the Monsters, Inc. character list. #Because she is an enchanted character, the glow effect interferes with the capture, so tap her star to bring up her upgrade screen. (For non-enchanted characters, I recommend skipping this step.) Note: for all characters that aren't Enchanted, when you select the character, you can move it left and right a ways while it is selected. Do this to get the stars to be in the least overlapping position possible. #Take a screenshot when she has rotated to an appropriate angle. You'll likely need to take a bunch of screenshots before you get the angle you want. Also, since she is enchanted, you need to get a screenshot that doesn't have any sparkles covering her. I got lucky on this, and didn't have any sparkles touching her at all, but if you get a nice screenshot that has sparkles touching the character, but behind it, you can edit those out. # Copy the screenshot to your PC or Mac. If you're using Photos on a Mac, once you import the screenshot, select it, then select File->Export->Export Unmodified Original for 1 Photo... To the right is my screenshot. #Open the screenshot in Gimp. #Select Layer->Transparency->Add Alpha Channel. #Use the crop tool to roughly crop the image so that only the figure is left. #Select the Fuzzy Select Tool (Magic Wand), and make sure its Threshold is set to 15 in the Tool Options area. #Tap in the background. Most or all of the background should be automatically selected. If only part of it is selected, Shift+Click in other parts of the background, and continue doing this until the entire background is selected. It is important to select all of it at once for Enchanted figures, but not so important for other figures. The Grow operation in step 12 works best if you've selected everything first. #Select Edit->Cut. #For non-Enchanted figures, this will probably do a great job of cutting away the background from behind the character. Unfortunately, for Enchanted figures, it will leave a halo, which happens here. #If you have a halo, select Edit->Undo Cut, then select Select->Grow..., enter 1 in the box, and hit OK. Then select Edit->Cut again. #Using the rectangle tool, manually select and cut out all the sparkles and stars that aren't touc hing the figure. #Zoom in to 800% and cut away things that are touching the figure. I had to do this where the star intercepted the top of her head, as seen on the right. #Change the Threshold of the Fuzzy Select Tool to 0 and select an area where the star overlaps the geometry. #Use the Color Picker Tool (Eye Dropper) to pick the color of an adjacent area that isn't covered by the star. #Select Edit->Fill With FG Color. #You can copy and paste from other similar areas. For example, in my case, the area at the very bottom of the zoomed in screenshot matches what the similar area under the star should look like, so I copied and pasted from there. You can use select tools to select areas and fill them with FG color, using the Color Picker Tool to change the FG color. You can use the Pencil Tool, set to a size of 1 to draw individual pixels. (Note that if you have any selection, the pencil tool will only draw inside the selection.) When using the Pencil Tool, Ctrl+Click will pick up a color (just like the Color Picker Tool). (On Mac, this is Cmd+Click instead of Ctrl+Click.) #When you're satisfied with your image, select Image->Autocrop Image. #Select File->Export As..., then give it a filename, and make sure to use the .png file extension. Accept the default PNG settings unless you know what you're doing and want to change something. Unless someone replaces it, you can see my result of following these steps on the Agent 001 page. Category:Blog posts